Faces of Science: Roger Wiens

As a kid, Roger Wiens built model rockets and even a telescope. Today, Wiens fuels his passion for space by contributing to technology that is helping to explore Mars.

March 4, 2015

Roger Wiens, Space

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Wiens’ passion for space has no limits

At nine years old, Roger Wiens built a telescope to sketch the features of Mars.

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Faces of Science: Roger Wiens

Forty years later he returned to the Red Planet, this time as part of a team that invented ChemCam, a device aboard the rover Curiosity.

Using a laser that packs the energy of a million light bulbs into a spot the size of a pinhead, ChemCam blasts pieces of Martian rock in search of elements like carbon and oxygen—some of the basic building blocks of life.

June, 9 2015 - The unicycle that Los Alamos student intern Max Schulze and his brother had given their dad for Father’s Day in 2005 did not get much use until Schulze tried it and got hooked. Today, he is a three-time unicycling world champion.